NYPD can’t nix disability for boxing-case hero

A HEPATITIS-STRICKEN police undercover — infected while posing as a boxing corner man — scored a one-sided decision over the NYPD in his fight for a disability pension.

The legal TKO came when an angry judge accused the NYPD of fixing its legal bout with the lieutenant, who spent 17 months in Las Vegas during the surreptitious 2002-04 investigation.

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"The Police Pension Board has done all that it could to deprive one of (the) Finest the benefits that he has properly earned," ruled Judge Alice Schlesinger. "The decision to deny petitioner this status was motivated by bad faith . . . (and) must be set aside as arbitrary, capricious, unreasonable and unlawful."

The 48-year-old NYPD lieutenant, who first fell ill in 2005, sought an accidental disability retirement that would have paid him $90,000 — or 75% of his last salary of $120,000 — most of it tax-free.

The NYPD instead granted him an ordinary disability retirement — the same 75% but with federal taxes taken out.

He's now trying to land on the liver transplant list, a source told the Daily News.

The Schlesinger ruling, issued Oct. 1, kicks the case back to the Police Pension Board.

"I believe the court has given very clear directions to the Board of Trustees and medical board that they acted improperly," said the lieutenant's lawyer, Philip Seelig.

"I'm very confident that when they reconvene, they will see the justification for awarding the accidental disability pension."

The judge, in a 16-page blast, ripped the NYPD for a decision that "rests on inaccurate facts and conclusions and ignores the historical account of (the lieutenant's) life."

The unidentified officer, along with an NYPD detective and an FBI agent, was sent west for a joint investigation of corruption in the seamy world of boxing.

The trio worked and lived with a number of boxers brought into Nevada illegally from Central and South America, often spending time with the fighters inside a gym. "They weren't sitting in the stands watching the fights," the source said. "They were training with boxers. They were working with them in the corners when they got cut."